As in Olden Days
by Drag0nst0rm
Summary: Even centuries after his death, the legend of Eugenides lives on. Whether the invading armies like it or not.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Number six. I don't own Queen's Thief, or the song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" which is where the title is from.**

* * *

The hook ought to be behind bulletproof glass, layered with alarms, and probably locked in a vault somewhere. Since they'd only just recovered it, however, for now it was merely laid out on the restoration table and protected by the fact that it was in the middle of a military camp. A military camp that was on the verge of its final victory, no less.

The young aide she'd brought in to see it leaned in for a closer look. "Amazing," he said in a low voice. "To think it could have survived this long."

She leaned against the table. "Isn't it? Of course, it's only one of many that King Eugenides undoubtedly owned, but best we can tell, this is the one he killed Nahuseresh and the Mede Emperor with."

"And a hundred others. You'd almost expect it to be still dripping blood."

She laughed. "I'm sure the rebels have all sorts of stories about it doing exactly that. Of course, we're only concerned with the other stories."

He finally glanced up. "Other stories?"

She leaned in even closer. "Eugenides was the greatest king to ever rule the Peninsula, at least according to the stories."

"At least half of which have to be myth, surely."

"Oh, of course. But those foolish enough to resist the occupation have latched onto those myths. They think their kings and queens of old are going to rise again and save them if they can only get the hook to the remnants of their 'Sacred Mountain.'"

He snorted. "That's ridiculous."

"But might affect their morale," she pointed out. "So we'll just have to hang onto it, won't we?" She'd leaned in closer, lowering her voice to a whisper. She was almost close enough to kiss him now.

He leaned back slightly. "Girl back home, remember?" he said ruefully.

She pouted. "And can she get you in to see priceless relics?"

"No," he admitted with a grin. He leaned in closer.

She closed her eyes.

"But she is far more beautiful."

Her eyes snapped open.

The aide snatched up the hook, gave her a slightly apologetic smile, and ran for the window.

She froze for a moment before regaining her voice. "Guards!" She didn't wait for them, instead running after the aide.

He was already out the window and running along the ledge that ran outside it. Just as she poked her head out it, still shouting for the guards, he leaped for the next building over.

He wasn't going to make it. Halfway across, that became abundantly clear.

Good. she thought viciously, cheeks flushed with humiliation. Let him fall. Then they could get the stupid hook back and -

He reached up into thin air and caught - something. She couldn't see what, but he must have hung something out there somehow, because he caught hold with his free hand and swung himself forward, using the momentum to make it to the next roof.

"Traitor!" she screamed out.

"No," he shouted back over his shoulder. "Thief!"

* * *

Shots rang out at him as he raced across the roofs, but he wasn't particularly worried about them. He was almost to his point of exit, and he wasn't going to die by bullet anyway.

He'd died from a fall once, and someday he would again.

But probably, he thought as he clutched his hook tighter, probably not today.

* * *

 **Alternate Title: In which Gen and Co. pull a King Arthur.**


	2. Chapter 2

Limping through the streets of his occupied city wasn't fun on the best of days.

Today was not the best of days.

His limp was worse than usual, probably because it had rained all through the night and the air was still heavy and damp despite the reemergence of the sun. His sister had tried to keep him home in concern, but belts were tight enough as it was. He had grimly limped to work only to find the bookshop he kept records for being ransacked by occupying soldiers for being a suspected hotspot of sedition.

Not that they were wrong, Costis admitted to himself when his black mood had passed enough to allow fairness. And with any luck, the others had managed to slip away into the crowd too.

Still, he wasn't sure how long it would take for them to track him down. He needed to warn his sister, and then -

He didn't know. If getting shot hadn't invalided him out of the army halfway through the invasion, he would have been with the remnants of it forming the backbone of the resistance in the mountains. As it was, he had no idea how to find them even if he could make it there on his leg.

He was jolted out of his dark thoughts by shouts ringing out over the crowd. He looked around frantically for the dreaded red coats. If they had found him already -

But the guards pushing their way through the reluctant crowd were chasing a different prey, a young man slipping his way through the crowd like an eel. He looked like a printer's apprentice, judging by his coat, and Costis could well believe theirs had not been the only shop to be overturned today. Something bulged in his pocket - papers, probably, although the shape was odd.

Costis moved aside so the runner could pass him, having no other help to offer, but the apprentice stumbled as he neared, eyes widening as he saw Costis.

Costis had no time to wonder about that. One of the guards had managed to push through and catch up. His hand was already extended to grab the young man's arm.

Costis reacted on bone deep instinct.

He punched the guard in the jaw.

The man went down like a felled tree. Costis stared down at his own, wondering how he could be so abysmally stupid.

Not that it wasn't satisfying. Or that there wasn't a deeper part of him he barely recognized insisting he couldn't have done anything else.

But it had been stupid all the same.

"Panic later," the youth said and grabbed his wrist to drag him into a run. They'd only gone a few rough steps when he looked back, frowning, to find the holdup and saw the limp. He spat an archaic curse.

"Just run," Costis said grimly, turning to face their pursuers. The tides of the crowd had held them back, but that wouldn't hold for long. Maybe he could at least get in one more good hit.

"Not this time," the other growled and yanked him into an alley half covered by strung up laundry. "Quick, change coats."

"We can't just - "

"How do you think I got this one?" he asked as he shrugged off his ink stained jacket and exchanged it for a dull green. "Here, put this on." He tossed over a pale grey one.

Costis obeyed without thinking and followed the other as he led the way through the maze of alleys. The shouts got more and more distant until they vanished entirely, and they stopped to breathe in the abandoned courtyard the youth had led him to, adjacent to a war torn house.

Costis limped to the edge of a dry fountain and let his knees give way at last.

The other man was barely breathing hard. He grinned at Costis. "I wasn't expecting to see you here, Costis. Or anywhere, really. Are any of the others with you?"

"Others?" Others of the resistance? Costis wasn't sure if he should say. And how did this stranger know his name?"

"Kamet? Teleus? Aris, even."

"The names ring a bell, but I can't place them," Costis admitted. "And how do you know _my_ name?"

The young man swallowed. "You don't remember me."

Costis looked him over again. "You look familiar," he offered helplessly. "What's your name? When did we meet?" A thought struck him. "If it was in the hospital tent, I probably won't remember," he said apologetically, rubbing his leg. "That's all pretty blurry."

The young man looked stricken for a second before he regained control of himself. "You can call me Gen," he said. "The rest isn't important."

"Short for Eugenides?" Costis guessed. Even centuries after the great annux had died, the name was still popular. "For the old king?"

Gen gave a strange grimace. "For the thief," he corrected, patting whatever was in his pocket. "Appropriately, as it turns out."

Costis grinned at him. "And does the great thief have a plan to get us out of this?"

"I did," he said. "Unfortunately, it fell through. Thus the mad dash through the market, and you getting dragged into this."

"I was on their list anyway," Costis said. "And it's my duty to help out in any case."

Gen shot him a hopeful look, but whatever he saw on Costis's face made it fade again.

Something heavy curdled in Costis's stomach at the sight. It shouldn't matter what Gen thought of him, but it did.

"I need to warn my sister," he finally said. "I've a few weapons stashed away there, and some contacts that might be able to get us out of the city. I've nothing after that."

"If you can get us out of the city, I can get us to the resistance."

"I'm not sure if any of my squad made it there to vouch for me." He hoped so. The alternatives were far worse.

Gen waved this off. "You're with me. You'll be fine."

"You barely know me!" Costis protested.

"You've got an honest face." Gen grinned. "And an excellent punch."

Costis _did_ have an honest face, at least according to everyone he knew, but he'd used it against too many of the occupiers to think that counted for much. Still, if Gen trusted him, he should probably stop trying to talk him out of it.

But - "I'll probably slow you down," he said reluctantly.

Gen waved this off too. We won't be walking the whole way. I'm sure we can hitch a ride on someone's cart."

"I know a man who has horses," Costis offered. He didn't have the money for two, but the man had helped the resistance before. Costis could probably talk him around.

Gen winced. "Horses," he said unenthusiastically.

Costis frowned at him. "You don't ride?"

"I can," Gen said, both words all but dragged out of him. "If necessary."

"I'd say it's necessary." He pushed himself to his feet. "Why were they chasing you, anyway? What did you steal?"

Gen's grin grew self-satisfied. "Just a relic from a dead king." He pulled it out of his pocket: a razor sharp hook, gleaming in the sunlight.

Costis stared at it, entranced. For a moment it looked wet with blood - no, shining with firelight - no, reflecting the shine of a golden cup -

He gasped and stumbled back against the fountain. Hands grabbed his arms and helped support him.

"Costis?"

He always had to have his moment of drama. "I'd punch you again if it wasn't treason," Costis said. "My king."

His king's hands tightened on his arms for just a moment. "You remember."

"Wasn't that the point?"

The king hesitated. "Actually, that was more of a hunch."

"You didn't know, did you."

"I suspected."

"Of course, my king."

"You should probably keep calling me Gen until we get out of here."

Calling his king by name would be hard enough. He wasn't sure he could manage a nickname.

"As you say, m - Eugenides."

"Close enough. I'll wear you down eventually."

Costis had no doubt of that at all.


	3. Chapter 3

The king slid off his horse, secured it, and flopped down into the shade provided by the olive trees that lined the dusty trail they'd been following. He was still wearing the disgruntled expression he'd had more or less since he'd gotten on the horse.

Costis dismounted more carefully and looked around to make sure they were as alone as they appeared. A shadowed silhouette made him tense before he realized it was just an ivy covered statue. Moving closer, he saw there was an even more ivy covered altar set before it. A shrine, then, one likely abandoned since the early days of the war.

The ivy was too heavy to guess who the shrine was to, but they needed all the help they could get. Costis tore off the vines as best he could. A huge swathe was pulled away from the face.

His breath caught. "Eugenides."

"Hmm?"

"Not you," Costis said hurriedly. Although . . . He tilted his head. "Is it?"

"I'm supposed to be the cryptic one," his king complained, rolling to his feet and coming over. He came to a rather abrupt halt. "Ah. I see. There's a certain . . . resemblance."

"They must have used you as a model," Costis said, a bit uneasily. It had been odd enough to know intellectually that they were history; it was worse to see it set in stone.

The king looked even more disturbed. "I suppose someone took advantage of the shared name." He grimaced. "Do you think he'd be more offended by my presumption if I left it or by the destruction if I did something about it?"

Costis was rather startled to be asked. "You'd know better than me." He looked sidewise at the king. "Does he still . . . " It was hard to contemplate in the bright light of day.

"Tell me to stop whining and go to bed?" the king supplied. "Mostly in dreams, so far. I think I lived my whole life over again that way. The others have seen less. I'm hoping the hook will bring back the rest." He gestured toward his pack, still on the horse, and Costis was abruptly struck by the fact that the king had two hands now. It probably shouldn't have taken him this long to do so.

"We could just leave it," Costis suggested, nodding at the shrine. "It's stood this long."

The king looked doubtful. "We're about to climb the mountain. On horseback. That's a lot of opportunities to fall."

"Are you sure he'll care?" Costis asked doubtfully. The king had never been particularly reverent before. Faithful, yes. Reverent, no.

The king grimaced. "It's possible my last fall is making me paranoid," he admitted.

Costis wondered just how tactless it would be to ask how exactly that had happened. Whatever it had been, it had been after Costis's own death.

His chest ached at the memory.

"You could promise to build another statue if you survive the war," Costis suggested in an effort to banish the memory.

The king's eyes sharpened. "That's a thought." He turned his attention fully to the shrine and said, as seriously as if he saw his patron standing there in front of him, "I never sought this. If we survive the war, we'll return and raise a better statue in tribute."

"We?"

"You're the one who found it," the king pointed out. "You're not getting out of this that easily." He sighed. "I think that's the best we can do for now."

"Onward?" Costis asked.

The king looked sourly at his horse. "Onward," he agreed grimly. "We're getting close now." He edge closer to his mount. "You know, before the war, there were rumors of some sort of horseless carriage being made on the continent." He sounded incredibly wistful.

Costis wasn't sure what was so impressive about that. "What animal does it use instead?"

"Absolutely none. It's mechanically driven. Like a watch, I'd imagine."

Costis was skeptical.

The king looked amused at his skepticism. "After everything you've seen, that's what you balk at?"

Everything odd he'd seen had always been somehow connected to his king, who sometimes seemed to only have one foot planted in the world of mortal men. If his king had said that he had a horseless carriage and they'd be making their escape on it, Costis would have believed him. The continent was anotther story entirely.

But he could hardly tell the king that, so he just said stubbornly. "I've seen all of those things. If I see a horseless carriage, I'll believe in that too." He eyed the way the king still hadn't gotten on his horse. "And unless you have one in your pocket, we still have to ride."

The king scowled at his horse. "Your days are numbered," he warned it. "The age of the horse is about to end."

"I'd rather end the age of the Mede," Costis said as he approached his own horse.

"The first," the king assured him, still eyeing his horse. "Then the beasts."


End file.
